Life
What Happens When You Don't Drink Enough Water?
Drinking a lot of water is considered super healthy, and there are definitely some weird things that can happen to your body if you don't drink enough water to prove that. While there's lots of advice out there suggesting you drink eight glasses of water a day, there's nothing that says you need to drink a copious amount of water in order to be healthy. It's generally agreed that we should drink enough water per day to the point where we are not thirsty, which makes the most sense. If you're thirsty, drink water. If you're bloated from drowning yourself in water and running to wee every ten minutes, maybe ease up on the water consumption.
Drinking water has lots of beneficial consequences for your body, from promoting kidney and brain health to reducing joint pain, making you happier, and protecting your spine. Given that humans are made up of around 60 percent water, which is what makes the body regulate its temperate, passes nutrients through cells, and flushes toxins and waste from the body. Basically, water is pretty rad. Not drinking enough will make your body go a little wacky, and dehydration is not a healthy state for anyone. Here are some of the weird things that happen to your body when you don't drink enough water:
1. You'll Be Hungrier Than Usual
Studies have shown that drinking water before meals will affect your appetite. Thirstiness will often be mistaken for hunger, and when eat to satisfy what you perceive as hunger, you only end up thirstier without realizing it. Dehydration also slows down your metabolism, which isn't ideal when coupled with the added hunger because it only perpetuates your thirst even more.
2. You Might Be Constipated
While there are other factors that can lead to constipation, like poor nutrition generally, a low intake of liquids can also cause you to become constipated. Along with dietary suggestions like eating more fiber, doctors will tell you to drink more fluids if you're having trouble dropping a load.
3. Fatigue And Poor Concentration
Apparently dehydration causes your brain to shrink away from your skull, which means you need more brain power and energy to complete the same tasks. This results in tiredness and poor concentration.
4. Kidney Stones
An extreme repercussion of dehydration is kidney stones. Minerals including calcium, oxalate, magnesium and sometimes uric acid, can easily become concentrated and settled on the kidney or the part leading from the kidney to the bladder (the ureter). This is what forms the "stone" part of kidney stones, and is very, very painful, requiring hospitalization.
5. Dry Skin
Water plumps up and hydrates your skin. All the expensive Kardashian products in the world won't save you from dry, wrinkled, and patchy skin if you don't drink enough water.
6. Headaches And Mood Swings
Dehydration leads to poor circulation, which leads to a lack of blood supply to your brain, which leads to headaches and mood swings. And those aren't upper mood swings either. You'll be achey and more irritable the less you water you ingest, so drink up!
